Legal groups putting God on the docket

September 05, 2007|By Lisa Anderson, Tribune national correspondent

In many ways, the ACLJ represents the conservative mirror image of the American Civil Liberties Union, the 87-year-old non-profit group that many on the political and religious right love to hate for its rigorous insistence on the separation between church and state.

Although those words do not appear in the Constitution, that is the common interpretation of the 1st Amendment's clause banning government establishment of religion. Many conservative Christians take issue with that, including Bill Saunders, human-rights counsel at the Family Research Council, which promotes conservative family values and a Judeo-Christian view of the world.

"Free expression means the government should accommodate religious expression, not be hostile to it," said Saunders, who believes that groups like the ACLJ are needed to defend religious freedom.

Televangelist Robertson envisioned the ACLJ as a counterweight to what he, and many other Christian conservative leaders, describe as the ACLU's liberal, anti-faith stance and its threat to the presence of religion and the freedom to practice it in the public square.

"That is a grotesque -- word carefully chosen -- misrepresentation. When they say 'public square,' it's really 'government-sponsored,'" said Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

With a staff of five, including three attorneys, the program was established in 2005 to "ensure that the government does not promote religious beliefs nor interfere with the free exercise of religion." Gunn noted the ACLU has been engaged in religious liberty cases almost since its beginning, without regard for the faith, or lack thereof, of those it represents.

He noted among the first of the organization's many religious liberty cases was West Virginia vs. Barnette, a 1943 case in which the ACLU successfully argued that it was unconstitutional to compel Jehovah's Witness students to salute the American flag against their religious beliefs.

Not surprisingly, because both assert the defense of religious rights, the goals and strategies of the ACLU and the ACLJ sometimes parallel each other.

"A lot of times, you'll see the ACLU arguing that someone's rights were being violated and the ACLJ making exactly the same argument -- but in reverse," said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

ACLU counterpoint

"They cast themselves as a counterpoint to the ACLU and, in some ways, they're right," said Katherine Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest and executive director of Political Research Associates, a think tank that monitors the political and religious right. "The ACLU represents tolerance, freedom and protection of the Constitution, whereas these folks represent intolerance, oppression and the dismantling of our constitutional freedoms," she said.

Sekulow readily admits he has taken more than one page from the ACLU's strategy book and, on occasion, has joined forces with them.

"The ACLJ, Americans United and the ACLU are actually on the same side in a lot of free exercise [of religion] cases," Irons said, "but they're on opposite sides in the Establishment Clause cases."

Meanwhile, the ACLJ is expanding its international influence through its France-based European Center for Law and Justice and its Moscow-based Slavic Center for Law and Justice, both established in 1998. The ECLJ, which just received special consultative status from the United Nations, is working to "create a paradigm for breathing room for religious liberty" as the European Court of Human Rights develops law in that area, Sekulow said. In Moscow, he said, the goal is to facilitate "the ability of churches to operate. Period. It's a much more fundamental concern."

Looking ahead, Sekulow isn't too concerned that the political clout the ACLJ has enjoyed under Bush may wane with the end of his administration.

"I'm already implementing the post-Bush strategy," he said cheerfully.

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Leading Christian legal groups

* American Center for Law and Justice: Founded in 1990 by televangelist Pat Robertson, the Washington-based group is the best-financed, with a $35 million annual budget. Led by the dynamic Jay Sekulow, who does daily radio programs and a weekly television broadcast, the group also has the highest profile.

*Alliance Defense Fund: Established in 1994 by a coalition of evangelical groups led by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, this Arizona-based group claims 1,000 attorneys in its network and operates on a budget of $27 million.

* Thomas More Law Center: Co-founded by Domino's Pizza mogul Tom Monaghan in 1999, the Michigan-based center has a budget of about $2.5 million.

* Liberty Counsel: Operating on a budget of about $2 million, this Florida-based group was founded in 1989 by Mathew Staver, currently the dean of the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University School of Law.